-15.49(-0.98%)

+0.18(+0.29%)

-0.90(-0.07%)

-0.01(-0.03%)

+0.00(+0.09%)

When Digital Watermarks Go Wrong

Stamps, like so many products that have digital lives, are susceptible to thievery. An unscrupulous yet correspondence-happy individual could ostensibly take an image of a postage stamp found online and use that image to send birthday cards or holiday greetings or action figures sold on eBay. To prevent this, the U.S. Postal Service employs a crude-but-effective form of theft prevention: In the stamps it displays in its online store, the mail service simply crosses out the value of the stamp.

Yes. Ouch. (And also: touché?) Now, to be fair, there is literally nothing on any of the four Four Flags stamps that could be crossed out without occasioning some similarly ironic hilarity. And anyway, the watermarking is sort of -- just a little bit -- poetic. If not, one hopes, prophetic.